7 Famous Movies With Totally Unnecessary Happy Endings

Don’t get me wrong: I love a happy ending as much as the next guy. There’s no greater feeling than stepping out of a darkened movie theatre and readjusting to the world, having watched the hero punch the villain off the side of a cliff whilst deploying an awesomely witty line like… uh, “Today’s the day you die!” or, you know, something much, much better than that.

But sometimes you can’t escape the feeling that the writers missed a trick when they decided to grant a movie with a happy ending that feels forced or tacked on… why did they choose to tie things up so neatly? Surely it would have been far better to imbue the movie with a bit of added weight – the kind you get from leaving things ambiguous or mysterious or (better yet) sad.

You see, there’s a time and a place for a happy ending, and Hollywood doesn’t always seem to know when that is. Here’s 7 iconic movies that cling to happy endings, though each and every one of them would have been greatly improved had the associated filmmakers thrown out all the kissing and smiles and replaced them with feelings of torment and sacrifice and characters falling into extended periods of self-loathing.

Did you even read this? The whole article is about how these movies should not have used hapoy endings, I didn’t get the sense that he thought they were good at all… he even suggested that these moview should have had bleaker endings. Also you sound like a pretentious moron. If I heard you listing those directors in real life I would have to explode wih laughter.

“I love a happy ending as much as the next guy. There’s no greater feeling than stepping out of a darkened movie theatre and readjusting to the world, having watched the hero punch the villain off the side of a cliff whilst deploying an awesomely witty line like… uh, “Today’s the day you die!” or, you know, something much, much better than that.”

What?! No! Shawshank was brilliant! Just like King’s short story. If that had had a sad ending then the whole movie would have been a downer! I think it was unique because it had a happy ending. I remember first time I watched it I didn’t expect that.

I watched Army of Darkness on Star Movies Asia and got the ending with Ash waking up in the post-apocalyptic world. I never saw the “happy ending” you mentioned so I was like “What? Army of Darkness’ ending was awesome”.

War Of The Worlds didn’t had a happy ending. Sure, Robbie survived and he went back to his family, but after all the devastation that the aliens brought and all the deaths, the end of the movie works as a sign of relief, of hope. And also, it’s faithful to the original novel.

Interesting list. One film I will critique slightly is ‘The Game’. Though it probably contains the weakest ending in any Fincher film, I wouldn’t say it’s a completely happy ending. Nicholas has that nervous look about him at the end that suggest he’s still wondering if the game is still going on, and whether he’ll ever know if it stops. Plus, a alternate ending that was going to be used would have had a sign saying something along the lines of ‘Ready for leavel 2?’ on it, obviously indicating that the game was not yet over.

Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2? I’m aware its based on a novel so it will have been difficult to change (however the end of the novel was horrendous anyway) after a huge build up over 3 films in regards to the ‘powerful’ volturi, we get an effective dream sequence – no shock, no sense of the ‘volturi’ mighty power, just a case of, “oh this could happen, so we’ll walk away and leave you be” that being said it was still better than the book, where nothing actually happened